Bram has finally got around to seeing The Fifth
Estate. No small attraction of this movie was of course the fabulous Benedict
Cumberbatch who plays Julian Assange, but Bram has concluded Benedict is better
as Khan (no spoilers for those of you who haven't seen Star Trek Into Darkness,
which you should).
Anyway, back to The Fifth Estate: an interesting but
ultimately unsatisfying movie. Unfortunately the film suffers from being old
media’s take on new media, whilst it manages to highlight the importance of new
media ventures such as WikiLeaks, it really suggests that such projects are
petulant children and until they grow up and learn some manners, they should be
looked after by their older siblings who know the rules of the game. It doesn’t
really tackle the real issue of whether existing media is serving its purpose
of exposing the truth or whether it is now in the capture of government and big
business. It never tackles the question of why whistleblowers turn to
organizations such as WikiLeaks rather than established media. Ultimately of
course The Fifth Estate descends into a good versus evil battle: is Assange a
hero or a villain? Rather than focus on the big questions of surveillance,
privacy, big data and what role is the media playing in keeping an eye on the
other three estates, we are again preoccupied with the question of personality.
Yet again, we get a gratuitous scene of Assange dancing…
The film is told from the perspective of Daniel
Domscheit-Berg (played in the movie by Daniel Brühl), one time admirer of, and
collaborator with, Assange. The film is based upon Berg’s book Inside
WikiLeaks, a book highly critical of Assange (unsurprising since they had a
falling out and Assange suspended and then excluded Berg from WikiLeaks) and
the WikiLeaks book written by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke
Harding, who also had a falling out with Assange during the publication of the
war logs and US Embassy cables over the questions of redaction and matters of
trust. Unsurprisingly therefore it tracks Berg's gradual disillusionment
with Assange and his exclusion from WikiLeaks. The film deals only
tangentially with Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and mentions the sexual assault
allegations and detention of Assange at the conclusion of the film in text boxes.
The film operates in the style of having various
characters act as the mouthpiece for various points of view. Berg’s girlfriend
(Anke played by Alicia Vikander) is very much the voice of conscience. We see
her reminding Berg that people may be hurt as a result of the leaks, that the
people named in the logs have families too. In the movie, she is a catalyst for
Berg’s determination to stand up to Assange over the question of redaction, and
ultimately bears responsibility for breaking up the band. She plays the role of
“moral person”, she respects the value of the work being done by WikiLeaks but
believes this does not justify any personal costs to her, Berg or anyone else.
She also reminds Berg that Assange is a “manipulative asshole”, implying he has
been corrupted by power and has gone bad (or mad or whatever). Daniel is the "everyman" character, motivated by conscience, generous, trusting and ultimately denounced
by Assange when he stands up to him about the redactions (though Berg is shown still working
“selflessly” behind the scenes to shut down access to the WikiLeaks server while Assange is presenting to the media).
Nick Davies (David Thewlis) from the Guardian represents the “good media”. He
has several set pieces where he tells us the viewer about the role of the
media. At one crucial point he warns Assange: “you need to be careful how the
story is published”. He claims that he is working on an angle to paint the
leaks as the next Pentagon Papers, and that the future of Assange, WikiLeaks
and Manning depends on this. It is at this point of the film that a key question
comes into play: what is the role of WikiLeaks as an organization: to publish
the truth, to protect whistleblowers, is it a source or a media organization?
Different points of view on this are represented by different characters, but
Davies is shown as trying to assist WikiLeaks in obtaining “legitimacy”. This
is a contentious (and generous) characterization of how the Guardian has
actually treated Assange.
Added to the narrative provided by the Berg and
Guardian books, the film includes a misleading side story about a US diplomat
concerned to protect her source in Libya when the US Embassy cables are
published. As Geoffrey Robertson has pointed out, this scene ‘could never have
happened as a result of Cablegate’ as Manning did not have access to ‘top’ or
‘ultra’ secret sources (Dreaming Too Loud, "Assange in Ecuador", 2013). Further,
any claims that WikiLeaks had blood on it's hands with respect to Cablegate
have been refuted, and there is no evidence that there have been any casualties
as a result of the Embassy Cable leaks.
The fictional diplomat, (Under Secretary of State
Sarah Shaw played by Laura Linney) who is initially impressed by the work of
WikiLeaks leaves us with the poignant comment that she is not sure who will be
judged more harshly by history: her or Asange.
This is of course a film about truth and lies. Big
lies told by governments, banks and corporations and small lies we tell one
another. We are ultimately made to feel more concerned about the “lies” that
Assange has told Berg, such as the fact that WikiLeaks is run by hundreds of
volunteers, than the lies the US Government is telling its own citizens on a
daily basis. If Assange is not 100% truthful and personally beyond reproach,
then the suggestion seems to be, we cannot respect his work.
It is also about loyalty and trust. Assange
explains early on to Berg that he works alone as “you don’t get far relying on
others”. A key moment in the film is when Assange learns of the assassination
of his Kenyan sources, he feels he has let them down because he did not get
their story enough publicity to protect them.
Throughout the film we are drip fed strange
elements from Assange’s past in pieces that feel quite staged (teenage hacking,
being on the run from his mother’s ex, his University education): in the tone of “you need to know this
about Assange because it explains why he is quite mad so try not to hold it
against him!”.
There is also a thematic obsession with the colour
of his hair, various explanations are given by Assange to different people
about traumatic events that turned his hair white. Then at the conclusion of
the film we are shown Assange dying his hair (a habit it is implied started
with the Family and their practice of forcing all children to dye their hair
blonde). But again, this is done in the context of presenting Assange as a liar
(references are also made to his hacker tag of Mendax).
Throughout the film Assange is presented as a
damaged character, but in the end this does not seem to be enough to redeem
him, which is what the film so desperately wants. He has to be after all a hero
or a villain, he cannot be neutral, human, conflicted. He is painted as an
egomaniac and it is this ego which ultimately undoes him.
The film ends with some straight to camera pieces
from Assange, apparently from inside the Ecuadorian Embassy, which again are
clumsy attempts to encapsulate key points of view, but they become awkward in
their lack of connection to the drama which has preceded this conclusion. They
do not vindicate, rather they ostracise the viewer even further from Assange.
It is a shame that the film, which does so well in visualizing
the new power of data, did not present a more balanced view of the
personalities involved. Assange has denounced the project and it is worth
looking at the email exchange between Cumberbatch and Assange regarding characterization
of Assange and Cumberbatch’s participation in the film. See also WikiLeaks comments on the script.
It is time we move beyond personality and take up
the bigger questions provoked by the leaks: how long are we content to sit by
and let the media numb us into accepting massive scale surveillance?
